Here’s a thought exercise that starts getting kind of gross the deeper you dive into it: what if the entire world’s population lived in one city? What would that city look like? How big would the city be? Or how small can you pack it? Is it even possible? RealLifeLore says that you can fit 7.4 billion people into a…

I think parting the Red Sea is easier than getting a huge crowd of people at a festival to make way for an ambulance but hey, miracles do happen. This horde participating in a Ganesh Visarjan in Pune, India is proof of that. The street was smothered with people but when an ambulance van started approaching, the street…

The world is urbanizing faster than ever, with over half of the planet’s population currently living in cities—more than any time in history. But when did this trend of “urbanization” start? It turns out its roots go back much farther than we thought.

It’s actually hard to know what to believe about millennials, the Americans born after 1980 who make up the largest generation in history. Every week there’s a newground-shatteringrevelationabouttheirlifestyles—but the most conflicting reports have to do with where they live.

We know that cities will need to get taller and denser in the next few decades. Yet it’s not easy to convince residents to build skyscrapers. This Swedish proposal for Stockholm’s downtown incorporates light, greenery, and public space into its tall buildings. It makes density look beautiful.

Definitely don't try this at home (or if you happen across a volcanic vent), but if you've ever wondered what would happen if you pressed down on hot lava, this video is a must-watch. It's a great lesson in how the reality of lava differs from the way many people think of the substance.

The development of micro-housing—apartments and other dwellings smaller than 300 square feet—is a growing trend in many popular cities cramped for space. But where in the country can you find the teeniest examples of this trend? Maybe not the cities you'd first guess.

The news that Cadillac is moving its Detroit headquarters to New York City delivered quite a blow to Detroit's ongoing rebirth. Especially considering Cadillac's advertising agency is a shining example of that rebirth: It's housed in a gorgeous new office in a salvaged 100-year-old building, proof that sticking it out…

The twisting sidewalks and dizzying density of Brazil's favelas might deter most outsiders from navigating these crowded inner-city neighborhoods, which informally house about 1.5 million of the country's residents. Yet in the last few months, both Google and Microsoft have both been seen mapping their narrow streets…

By 2025, the biggest cities in the world will not only be bigger, but exceptionally denser. According to a new study, Hong Kong will be the densest megacity on the planet, almost twice as crowded as the runner up. And here in the U.S.—and this might be a real shocker—Los Angeles may be more dense than New York City.

Early in Spike Jonze’s filmHer, Joaquin Phoenix’s character gazes out his Los Angeles window. As the camera pans, we see not a squat, sprawling metropolis, but a golden-lit landscape of skyscrapers stretching all the way to the horizon. When I saw the film, this scene made me gasp.

East Asia is a crowded place. The crazy-cramped architecture of locales like Hong Kong gives you an idea. But this image posted to Reddit by valeriepieris puts that population consolidation in a whole new light. And for the most part, it seems pretty accurate.

Really loving this demonstration of fluid density from Victoria, Canada's School-Based Weather Station Network. It's incredibly simple, but surprisingly effective. Every grade school on Earth should have this setup.

At first, the exoplanet 55 Cancri e didn't look all that impressive: just another large rocky planet circling its star every couple of days. But a recalculation of its orbit has revealed that it's the galaxy's densest known planet.

In twenty years, people will want homes that are half the size of today's mini-mansions, for half the price, a leading futurist claims. And housing will get denser, as exurban areas turn into small city centers. It all sounds awesome. The trouble is, futurists were making the exact same prediction twenty years ago,…

Physics researchers are hard at work making sure you can store those episodes of House on your hard drive for as long as possible without deleting them with a new breakthrough using the magneto-electric effect. Drives can possibly have a storage density of 1 terabit per square inch (up from 200 gigabits now), and a…